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A Word from the Department Chair, Dr. Ghadiali

Posted:

October 30, 2018

Welcome to The Ohio State University’s Biomedical Engineering department newsletter! As the new chair of BME at Ohio State, I am extremely excited to help continue the rapid development and growth of our department. Biomedical engineering is a highly-multidisciplinary endeavor and our department’s close collaboration with the comprehensive resources available on Ohio State campus are leading to both major research advances in healthcare and outstanding training for our students. In addition, we just started construction on a new building, the biomedical and Materials Engineering Complex (BMEC) that will be the new home for our department in 2020. It is therefore exciting times for BME at Ohio State and I am honored to have the opportunity to help lead the continued growth of our department.

First, I would like to sincerely thank our outgoing chair, Rich Hart, for his unwavering leadership over the past 12 years to Ohio State's BME program. As you may know, Rich was past-president of BMES and was also chair at Tulane University. We recently held a retirement reception for Rich during the weekend of the Tulane vs Ohio State football game and many of Rich’s friends and colleagues were in attendance. It was a wonderful way to thank Rich for his numerous and long lasting impacts on our discipline and although the Green Wave didn’t really affect any Buckeye trees, Rich’s skill as lead drummer was evident – maybe a new gig in retirement?

Among many activities on campus, the most exciting is the start of construction this semester on the Biomedical and Materials Engineering Complex (BMEC). This state of the art 125,000 square foot building will be located in the heart of the engineering campus and will be the new home for our department in 2020. The building will have many innovative features including undergraduate teaching labs on-display and clustering of research neighborhoods to foster collaboration. Specifically, BME will have several research neighborhoods in the areas of Cardiopulmonary Engineering, Cancer Engineering, Ocular Engineering and Musculoskeletal Engineering. BMEC will also have state-of-the-art facilities to support the numerous biomaterial and tissue engineering activities within both our department and the Material Science & Engineering department. In addition, this building will be a short walk across our beautiful campus to the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center (OSUMC) where many of our faculty and students continue to conduct groundbreaking research that directly impact patient care. One major development in this regard the establishment of the Frick Center for Heart Failure and Arrythmias which is being led by Dr. Tom Hund a full professor in BME. We also continue to have very close collaborations with other major centers on campus including the James Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Spine Research Institute, the Eye and Ear Institute and the Davis Heart & Lung Research Institute to name a few. Our integration within the medical center coupled with a leading college of engineering is shaping our department’s long term vision to use engineering tools to make high impact and translational advances in human health.

In this newsletter we highlight several of the major research developments made by our faculty and students.

Thank you for taking the time to read about the exciting development in BME at Ohio State.